PEACE JOURNALISM PERSPECTIVE
EDITORIAL
by Johan Galtung, 30 Jan 2012 - TRANSCEND Media Service Oslo, 27 January 2012 – Norway’s by no comparison greatest philosopher was born one hundred years ago today, and died close to the age of 97. A world philosopher, a human being with an incredible radiation. Nobody who came close remained the same. What was his basic theme? In one word: nonviolence, but in a broader and deeper sense than most approaching demanding idea.
TMS PEACE JOURNALISM
by Koozma J. Tarasoff, Spirit-Wrestlers – TRANSCEND Media Service Generally, people assume that the media has the responsibility of presenting the truth and nothing but the truth in its journalistic reports about peace and war. It is agreed that an informed public is less likely to go to war.
OTHER COMMENTARIES
BY TRANSCEND MEMBERS
by Dr. Bishnu Pathak – TRANSCEND Media Service Sujit Mainali for The Telegraph Weekly and its online edition telegraphnepal.com approached and interviewed this scholar on several aspects of Nepali politics, ongoing peace process and security related issues. Below the excerpts of this exclusive interview: Chief Editor.
by Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service The League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria is in an administratively critical time with the Observer Mission members from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council States of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates leaving the Mission on Tuesday 24, January. This represents 52 persons of an estimated 160, already badly understaffed.
by Uri Avnery - TRANSCEND Media Service The impossible has happened. The Egyptian parliament, democratically elected by a free people, has convened for its first session. For me this is a wonderful, a joyful occasion. For many Israelis, this is a worrisome, a threatening sight.
CURRENT AFFAIRS
by Mikhail Gorbachev – The Nation I am convinced that it is time to return to the path we charted together when we ended the cold war. Once again, the world needs new thinking, based not just on the recognition of universal interests and of global interdependence but also on a certain moral foundation.
by Antonio Martins – TerraViva Europe For five centuries, Europe has taken it upon itself to enlighten the world, teaching it ways to address and overcome crises, from ideas and wars to missionary work and genocides. But it forgot it only held a part of the world’s knowledge and now it is on the verge of the abyss, and it is time for a different approach.
by Glenn Greenwald - Salon Doctors Without Borders is halting work in detention centers in the Libyan city of Misrata because detainees are “tortured and denied urgent medical care,” the international aid agency said Thursday [26 Jan 2012]. The agency said it has treated 115 people with torture-related wounds from interrogation sessions. Some of the patients treated were tortured again after they were returned to detention centers, according to the agency.
by Robert Fisk - The Independent In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading. Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.
NONVIOLENCE
by George Lakey – Waging Nonviolence While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice.
ASIA & THE PACIFIC
by Dr. Bishnu Pathak (Nepal) – TRANSCEND Media Service Federalism in present Nepal has become a topic of great contention.
BRICS
by Fabíola Ortiz – Inter Press Service-IPS Community radio stations in Brazil are finding the internet and user-friendly information technologies to be valuable allies for their broadcasts, which focus on citizenship, social equity and human rights.
EUROPE
by Stefan Kaiser – Der Spiegel The negotiations over the Greek debt haircut are becoming increasingly suspenseful, with euro-zone finance ministers and the IMF pushing investors to accept greater losses. Hedge funds, more than any others, stand to profit, and are betting that the voluntary debt rescheduling will fail.
LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN
by Prensa Latina – TRANSCEND Media Service The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, called for Latin American unity in opposition to the Free Trade Agreements (FTA), sponsored by the United States in the region.
MEDIA
by Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service The California-based internet giant said in a blog post that the changes were designed to improve the user experience across various Google products, which range from web search to Gmail, YouTube and Google+, the social networking platform launched by the company last year. “Instead of keeping separate vats of information for each of its products, Google will now allow them to cross-pollinate, creating a complete picture of who you are, what you read, where you’re going and what you’re up to.”
by Common Dreams staff – TRANSCEND Media Service US among countries that have already signed ACTA. Under this new treaty, Internet Service Providers will police all data passing through them, making them legally responsible for what their users do online. And should you do something considered “breach of copyright” like, for instance, getting a tattoo of a brand logo, taking a photo and posting it somewhere, you may be disconnected from the Internet, fined or even jailed.
by Ali M Latifi – Al Jazeera In an announcement on its official blog, the micro-blogging service Twitter has said it will enable country-specific censorship of content on the site. In a Forbes article highly circulated on the site early Friday [27 Jan 1012], Mark Gibbs wrote that Twitter was committing “social suicide” with the censorship announcement. Gibbs’ article raised fears of an algorithm incapable of understanding the sarcasm that permeate the 140-character blasts comprising the service’s contents.
by Marcel Rosenbach and Gregor Peter Schmitz – Der Spiegel Recent weeks have seen spectacular arrests and mounting tension between those who would like to make it harder to share copyrighted material online and those who champion Internet freedom. Controversial US legislation has been shelved, but the battle continues.
ENVIRONMENT
by Jeanne Roberts, Celsias – TRANSCEND Media Service With news that the U.S. honeybee population has been so devastated that some beekeepers will qualify for disaster relief dollars, comes a report from Purdue University that one of the causes of honeybee deaths is – as long suspected – neonicotinoids.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
by Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service Finally, there is some argumentation in the West supportive of a nuclear free zone for the Middle East. Such thinking is still treated as politically marginal, and hardly audible above the beat of the war drums.
MILITARISM
by Danny Lucia – Socialist Worker The deaths caused by the U.S. in Iraq are “untold” by the media. OVER A million Iraqis are dead from America’s war. That sentence is a cognitive litmus test. Some people’s immediate reaction is, “That can’t be right,” because the United States couldn’t do that. Or because crimes on that scale don’t still happen. Or because they do happen, but only in horrible places that the United States hasn’t rescued.
by George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service Drone warfare can be used to thwart democratic movements, anywhere. In October last year, a 16 year-old called Tariq Aziz was travelling through North Waziristan in Pakistan with his 12 year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. Their car was hit by a missile from a US drone(13). As always, their deaths made them guilty: if we killed them, they must be terrorists. But they weren’t. Tariq was about to start work with the human rights group Reprieve, taking pictures of the aftermath of drone strikes. A mistake? Possibly. But it is also possible that he was murdered out of self-interest.
HEALTH
by John Laforge - CounterPunch The “International Journal of Cancer” has published in January [2012] a scientific study establishing a clear correlation between the frequency of acute childhood leukemia and proximity to nuclear power stations. The paper is titled, “Childhood leukemia around French nuclear power plants – the Geocap study, 2002-2007.” This devastating report promises to do for France what a set of 2008 reports did for Germany — which recently legislated a total phase-out of all its power reactors by 2022.
SHORT VIDEOS
by TMS Editor O que são Direitos Humanos? Documentary produced by United for the Human Rights. Documentário produzido por United for the Human Rights
JOKE OF THE WEEK
by TMS Editor While sports fishing off the Florida coast, a tourist capsized his boat.
